New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday refused to advance the hearing of a case on appeals against the removal of voters from West Bengal’s electoral rolls, despite the October 6 by-elections in Nandigram and Rejinagar.
A three-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana rejected the plea for an earlier hearing.
The request was made on the ground that the pending SIR appeals could affect voters in the two assembly constituencies that are going to polls next month.
“These are only by-elections, that’s all,” CJI Kant remarked.
The appeals connected with the SIR exercise are currently before appellate tribunals that were constituted under directions issued by the Supreme Court.
Counsel Cites Thousands Of Unresolved Cases
During the hearing, counsel seeking an urgent listing told the Bench that the matter had earlier appeared on the court’s list for September 29, but was now provisionally scheduled for October 5.
“We are seeking urgent directions so that it can be listed before that. There are more than 18,000 appeals pending which have not been disposed of. These people did not take part in the first elections,” the counsel said.
The lawyer submitted that the voters concerned faced the prospect of being unable to cast their ballots for a second time.
The Bench, however, said that the case would be heard on October 5.
Data available as of August 7 showed that appellate tribunals had disposed of only around 2% of nearly 38 lakh appeals filed by voters whose names were left out of the electoral rolls following the SIR exercise in March 2026.
An RTI response issued by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, showed that 75,443 voters were added to the rolls through decided appeals, while 7,339 appeals ended with the exclusion of voters.
This meant that 91.13% of the appeals decided by the tribunals resulted in the inclusion of the voter concerned in the electoral roll. Those voters had been unable to vote in the West Bengal Assembly elections held earlier this year.
Nearly 98% Appeals Still Pending
The information was supplied in response to an RTI application filed by Congress MP Isha Khan Choudhury, who had sought details about the appeals arising from the SIR process, as reported by Bar and Bench.
The reply stated that 37,27,838 appeals — accounting for 97.83% of all such cases — had not yet been decided. Put differently, the tribunals had disposed of only one in every 46 appeals received by them.
The SIR process led to the exclusion of lakhs of voters from West Bengal’s electoral rolls, preventing them from exercising their franchise in the recent Assembly elections.
Their cases are pending before the appellate tribunals established under Supreme Court directions. The top court had earlier declined to stay the SIR exercise.
In May, the Supreme Court upheld the Election Commission of India’s authority to undertake a Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. At the same time, it clarified that the Commission could assess a person’s citizenship only to determine whether the person was eligible to be enrolled as a voter.
The court had said that if the Commission was not satisfied that an individual met the legal requirements for inclusion in the electoral roll, it could send the matter to the competent authority of the Central government for a decision under the law.
